This invention relates to toys which move about by themselves once having been started, and particularly to dolls which have electrical or other power supplies inside the body for causing parts of the body to move or carry out various functions. It is known in the prior art to provide within a doll a tape recorder, for example, which when started will cause the doll to appear to talk or cry or sing. It is also known to provide electrical or spring wind-up drive means to cause the arms or head of a doll to move according to some predetermined program of motion. Finally, it is known to provide electrically driven wheels or other means in the feet or base of a doll to cause it to move about, except that such movement in dolls or robots traditionally appears awkward or stilted, because reproduction of all the basic human joints involved in walking, and coordinating these joints to duplicate human movement has thus far been essentially impossible and obviously impractical in regard to manufacturing a saleable product in the toy industry. Dolls or toys of the type described above share the important feature of being essentially upright and stable in the upright orientation. What is not heretofore known is a robot doll which can simulate the well known difficulty of human babies in getting up to a standing position from a prone position. During the process of learning to stand up and walk, obviously babies fall and arise repeatedly, and it is this phenomenon which children can readily identify with if such a robot toy existed which reproduced this age old struggle and accomplishment of all infants. The present invention is a novel robot mechanism having the outer shape of a human infant, and the capability of standing up from a prone position in a manner simulating that of a real infant, followed by an unstable movement while in the upstanding position also simulating the instability of an infant who has just learned to stand. This robot is further programmed to eventually fall down as real infants at this stage of development do, and to arise by itself and repeat the above-mentioned movements. The new robot doll performs the movements of arising, shuffling about, and falling down, by an internal system comprising an electric motor, numerous gears, cams and levers mounted in the torso, and an electric battery power source located in the legs. This invention involves use not only of the electric motor to drive various members in precise motion patterns, but application of gravity, inertia and balance or imbalance in general combined with the electric motor to cause the robot to achieve the unusual behaviour described earlier.
The batteries could be placed in a variety of locations within the robot, however, in the preferred embodiment illustrated in the drawings appended hereto, the batteries are placed in the legs which placement became a component of the overall design and configuration to provide the necessary balance or imbalance as will be described later.
The doll of this invention begins in a prone position. The drive system causes the doll to bend at the waist so that the mid section begins to rise while the feet and hands remain on the ground. The mid section rises higher until the doll forms an inverted V-shape. At a certain point in this movement, the center of gravity moves rearward and the V-shaped figure tips backward into a stable position while the torso is still bent in half. With the legs now in a vertical and upright position, and the head and arms lifted off the ground, the arms no longer rest against the ground, and thus are free to move slighly pursuant to an internal spring force. This arm movement signals the motor to reverse its drive and unbend the torso, which effectively opens the V-shape between the legs and the upper body as the upper body bends upward relative to the legs until it is in a vertical position aligned generally with the legs. The doll in the upstanding position then shuffles about due to an intermittent tipping motion of the torso relative to the legs, and eventually the movement is sufficiently great to unbalance the standing figure and cause it to fall forward, after which the standing up procedure is repeated. In a second preferred embodiment the intermittent tipping movement of the torso is modified to cause the legs or parts thereof to move and cause the doll to walk or at least shuffle in one direction simulating the movement of an infant learning to walk. The forward movement capability can be combined with the earlier described program causing the doll to fall down, so that it can again get up.
In this invention it is significant not only that the doll can perform the movements described, but that the mechanism to achieve this motion is extremely simple and sufficiently inexpensive for the doll to be manufactured profitably and sold in the toy industry. More particularly, the present invention provides remarkable simulation of the falling down, getting up and initial walking movements of human infants which has not heretofore been provided in robot dolls. The above-mentioned switch means actuated by movement of the arms when the doll partially arose, could obviously be replaced by a cam or electric or electronic timing device to establish the unbending movement of the torso at the appropriate time.
A preferred embodiment of this invention has been constructed and illustrated in appended drawings and will be described below to illustrate an actual construction for carrying out the present invention.